


memories come without calling

by symbidont (matskreider)



Series: are we human or are we dancer [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Biology, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Meditation, Other, Post-Canon, Shitty Ex Boyfriends, listen venom and riot were totally ex's in the entire movie you can't stop me, this sort of continues off of my other one?? not really??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matskreider/pseuds/symbidont
Summary: The thing about meditation is that it allows for both of their minds to become quiet, which allows for more communication between them. Venom tells Eddie that he’s able to see into Eddie’s dreams, whether he wants to or not.The lack of a conscious mind allows for the subconscious to become clearer,Venom had said.Eddie didn’t want to know the details of what Venom had seen, but he knows that most of it is nonsensical bullshit. He’s always had creative dreams like that, but now there’s more nightmare fuel mixed in. Now, if he reaches a complete meditative state, he can see bits and pieces of what Venom can see. Lately, they’ve been getting stronger, presumably as their bond solidifies.So as Eddie settles down, his mind already becoming blank, he’s only partially surprised by the vision that unfolds in his mind’s eye.





	memories come without calling

**Author's Note:**

> why do i always post shit at ass o'clock in the morning, whatever please enjoy, it kind of builds off of my other one i guess??
> 
> in response to [this,](https://symbidont.tumblr.com/post/179060555532/tbh-i-am-so-down-for-a-fic-where-either-ariot%22) featuring some of [this](https://symbidont.tumblr.com/post/178907596822/umikochannart-mirror-kiss) and [this.](https://symbidont.tumblr.com/post/179060346302/laughing-over-the-riotvenom-post-cause-now-im)

Meditation comes somewhat easy to him now. After learning how to work around Venom’s natural circadian rhythm – much slower than normal humans, since he’s used to life much farther from a star that his active cycles and rest cycles are much longer than Eddie’s used to – he learns that he can plan for about every four weeks he can expect Venom to enter some kind of “resting period.” He’s still alive, and still present, but is sort of dozing for a few days. The constant commentary comes to a lull, the ever present hunger dials back.

Eddie had once compared it to hibernation, but Venom reminded him that to his kind, a few days is like a few hours. That had Eddie questioning the life span of symbiotes, to which Venom had simply replied, **You die, I die.**

A simple ethos for a complex situation, yet Eddie hadn’t pressed.

Venom had entered one of those resting states the night prior, curled up safe and warm in Eddie’s chest cavity, around his heart. It’s nice to have some time to himself, Eddie thinks, even though he knows that Venom will awaken if he suspects anything is wrong with his host. There’s a reason he choses to settle near Eddie’s heart – less activity than his brain, such that he can actually rest, but still vital enough that any changes to homeostasis will awaken him with a protective rage.

Eddie chooses to take these days for what they’re supposed to be – a resting period. That he’s rearranging his own circadian rhythm around his Other’s is a fact he chooses to overlook. So he lays down on the hardwood floor, cleaner than it’s ever been, closes his eyes, and begins to meditate.

The thing about meditation is that it allows for both of their minds to become quiet, which allows for more communication between them. Venom tells Eddie that he’s able to see into Eddie’s dreams, whether he wants to or not. **The lack of a conscious mind allows for the subconscious to become clearer,** Venom had said.

Eddie didn’t want to know the details of what Venom had seen, but he knows that most of it is nonsensical bullshit. He’s always had creative dreams like that, but now there’s more nightmare fuel mixed in. Now, if he reaches a complete meditative state, he can see bits and pieces of what Venom can see. Lately, they’ve been getting stronger, presumably as their bond solidifies.

So as Eddie settles down, his mind already becoming blank, he’s only partially surprised by the vision that unfolds in his mind’s eye.

_Slick bodies writhing on a craterous surface, no light but enough to see, the smooth joining of consciousness, memories within memories, two separate entities merging into one, Leader, Leader, ours, MINE-_

Eddie sits up with a gasp, trying to recover from the images he had just seen. His mind brings up the memory of his fight with Riot and Drake on the side of the rocket, the four of them merged within one horrifying mass, only separated by Anne’s quick thinking. He still remembered feeling suffocated, his body pressed alongside Drake’s, his mind screaming out with four being’s thoughts and emotions, Venom trying in vain to separate himself from Riot by going deeper into Eddie but catching Drake in the crossfire. It was a horrifying thought, one that Eddie had tried to suppress – and had been successful in, for the most part, thanks to Venom. But with Venom in his resting state, it appears he’d undone it.

Somewhere in the haze of memories, Eddie feels Venom starting to wake up, reaching out to Eddie’s consciousness and immediately trying to soothe. **Eddie? Eddie, what’s wrong?** The almost sleepy nature of the voice, Eddie knows, is only because Venom knew that Eddie was alone. One time this had happened in public and Eddie had barely enough time to duck into an alley before Venom came over him, seeking to protect Eddie from an invisible foe.

They’d since had a talk about the differences between actual danger and imagined danger, but – as Venom had pointed out – panic attacks feel the same as actual danger on even a chemical level. They’re still working on it.

He doesn’t know how to explain what he’d just seen, so he “pulls back the curtain” so to speak, inviting Venom into his mind. He feels his symbiote go quiet, then with an uncharacteristic hesitancy, Venom murmurs, **It was nothing, Eddie. Just memories of mine that your brain cannot comprehend. Don’t worry about it.**

Eddie knows, deep down, that Venom’s lying about something. But he’s just starting to calm down, and honestly, they both could use some rest. Scrapping meditation for the rest of the day, Eddie gets up and makes his way to his bed, hoping to fill his mind’s eye with images of his own life instead. After all this time, he’d like to think he’s gotten better at picking which fights he wants to get involved in.

“Okay, love.”

Venom swirls softly around his heart, a gentle soothing feeling, as Eddie lays down for some actual sleep this time.

They both could use it.

 

* * *

 

The next time something like that happens is about four weeks later, right on schedule. Right now, Eddie’s trying to work on another article, mindful of Xoe’s warning, but his brain just isn’t working. He’s getting nothing from his notebooks, his handwriting looking like wingdings for all that his brain can comprehend. Venom’s snoozing somewhere near his ribcage, lazily wrapped around the bones. Right as he’s about to close his laptop in a gesture of surrender, he’s abruptly no longer in his living room.

_Bright white lights, different figures – food food FOOD – walking around, contained but feeling smug about it, pressing against the barrier, Panic, Blight, Riot, lying in wait, a feeling of annoyance, a feeling of betrayal, a feeling of hatred, screams and red lights, fire fire FIRE, anxious and afraid but not dead, more bright lights, packaged away, sealed in darkness, Carlton Drake._

The series of images that he sees read almost like an argument, from the complex emotional notes accompanying all of them. Distantly, he realizes that Venom is starting to wake up, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to parse together what he had seen.

**-ddie? EDDIE!**

The shout makes him scream and flail backwards, not unlike the first time Venom had used his name and he had KO’d himself on his shower wall. “Fuck, Venom, what-?”

**Are you alright?**

“Do I _look_ alright?” Eddie snaps. There’s a moment of recoiled shock, from both parties, before Eddie sighs and puts his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to snap. I just…shit’s getting weird again.”

He feels Venom coming out of his shoulder, curling around to look at him. **“Weird for humans or weird for us?”**

“Weird for…I dunno.” He runs a hand through his hair, finally looking up and meeting Venom’s concerned stare. Though he doesn’t have iris’s nor pupils of any sort, Eddie can somehow tell that his Other is looking off to the side, either in shame or in thought. He reaches out and cups his love’s jaw, gently turning that fanged smile towards him again. “Hey, when you see my dreams, what do they look like?”

Venom doesn’t blink, persay, but it’s a close thing. **“A cohesive narrative of images, even if they don’t make sense. I think they don’t make sense, but you seem to, so we tend to go along with it.”**

“So if I were seeing your dreams, it would look the same?”

**“Possibly. But I do not dream. Well, I don’t dream in ways that humans do. I don’t construct made up or implausible events.”**

Eddie stews on this information for a second. “Wait, so like, do you have an imagination?”

**“I have my own memories, memories of old hosts, your memories, and all experiences therein. From that, I can extrapolate possible paths of action or thought, but no, I don’t have an imagination in the sense you’re asking about.”**

“So if I asked you to think of a purple hippo…?”

 **“I think of the same thing you do when you asked that question, but only because we share a mind. Your imagination is our imagination. Your dreams are our dreams.”** Venom moves up closer, resting his jaw on the top of Eddie’s head, nuzzling his hair softly. It’s weird, but clearly affectionate. Eddie gently pets the inky tendrils still floating in front of his face, and it earns him a shiver that goes through both of their bodies.

“Then…what am I seeing when I see your own thoughts? Because if you don’t have an imagination, then those things really happened?”

 **Correct.** His Other chooses to answer telepathically, though he still exists outside of Eddie’s body.

“I’m seeing memories, then.”

Venom does not answer, but Eddie knows that he’s hit the nail on the head. It makes sense; the presence of Drake in this last montage, and the fiery crash definitely happened. Venom has told him of the crash, of how Riot escaped first and how he was the freest one for the six months the symbiotes had been on Earth. And he knew that they had gone to Earth for a purpose, a mission, just as he knew that the other two symbiotes – Panic and Blight, apparently – hadn’t made it.

He had underestimated the term “team leader” when Venom had described Riot’s role in all of this, right before the final fight had gone down.

 **You’re thinking very loudly.** Normally this type of complaint would be given with gruff fondness, if not mild irritation, but this time Venom seems almost…cautious.

“…Love?”

 **Yes?** There’s a happy fluttering within their body, and Eddie smiles automatically.

“You said no secrets between us, right?”

**…Yes.**

“Then can I ask you some questions and you promise to answer honestly?”

**…I will do my best.**

It’s not the best answer, but it is one that Eddie will settle for. He knows that Venom will eventually answer his questions, even if not right away. He trusts the symbiote like no one else in his life, and he thanks whatever cosmic forces put them into each other’s life. Even if it was –

“Riot and Drake,” he begins, softly. “Riot wasn’t with you when you were…tested, was he?”

 **No. Riot escaped and caused the crash.** Eddie’s impressed with how quickly the information comes from him.

“So how did Riot bond with Drake?”

Venom pulls back off of Eddie’s head, snarling as a hot bolt of anger goes through their body. Eddie puts his hands up, trying to ward off any actual aggression from Venom, but the hissing snarl continues for a few seconds more before dying down enough to allow for speech. **“Riot NEVER bonded with Carlton Drake. He was the definition of a parasite, and was planning on using Drake as a means to the end of this world. Drake was a usable host, but if presented with a better opportunity, he would have taken it. He TRIED to take you from me.”**

“Okay, okay,” Eddie murmurs, trying to keep Venom calm. “I’m sorry I…compared us to him. _I am,_ ” he insists when he feels Venom’s suspicion. “We aren’t the same as him. I know that.” He smiles a little bit, boldly reaching out to rub a knuckle down the side of Venom’s jaw. “You’re much cuter than him.”

Venom huffs, licking over his teeth in an absentminded thought. **“Fine. But no, Riot is nothing like me. And I, nothing like him.”**

This is it; the perfect opening. Eddie takes a breath that he hopes calms them both down, before continuing. “Did, uh. What happened on the rocket that caused the crash?”

**“I told you; he escaped and caused the crash. Attacked several of the humans on board, before making a host of Jameson. Then we were separated, shipped in those little containers all the way here, to Drake’s labs.”**

It’s an answer and a non-answer all in one. Eddie doesn’t comment further, but his mouth does twitch down a bit. He knows that Riot escaped, that information was shared with him when he had asked Venom about his arrival. He also did sort of bring it upon himself; technically, Venom had answered.

Venom somehow makes it look like he’s raising an eyebrow, an expression Eddie’s sure he learned from him. **“Is that all of your questions?”**

Eddie gives a halfhearted smirk before standing. “You tell me.”

 

* * *

 

A week later, Eddie’s walking back home from the gym when Venom finally starts talking again. He hadn’t been silent, per say, but after the endorphin rush from a work out Venom tended to fall silent in contentment. It’s sort of like riding out the afterglow, as his Other had explained to him a few months ago. That he had even known what afterglow meant shocked Eddie.

**Riot and I were something different before the crash. Something more.**

The words come out of nowhere, so suddenly that Eddie almost trips over nothing. Someone reaches out, grasping onto his wrist to help steady himself, even though Venom has already taken control of his body and kept him upright. He shakes off the benign citizen – a young girl with a pink beanie on, and wide alarmed brown eyes – giving her a shy smile before continuing on his way back home.

“What the fuck do you mean?” he whispers, wishing he’d kept his headphones in.

**We were…we fought.**

Eddie recalls the feelings of annoyance, betrayal, and hatred that he’d felt in their most recent shared dreams. “On the ship? Before the crash?”

 **Yes.** Eddie feels Venom growing slightly distressed with the turn that the conversation has taken. Luckily, they’re not far from home, and Eddie picks up the pace a little bit. **He suggested that we should break out still on the ship, take control of the ship to land and immediately blend in. I told him that that was a shit idea because we had no idea what the beings would be like on this new planet. I advised him that we lay low, see what they wanted from us, and manipulate them from the inside.**

Eddie’s reminded that Venom is, technically, an intelligence agent for his own species. It’s partially why his name is what it is; venom, a hidden poison that no one sees coming. Eddie makes it up the stairs, trying not to guess ahead of where this story was going. “Okay, then what?”

**He refused to listen. I stood my ground. He got pissed, like the rage filled moron that he is, broke out and caused the crash. In a way, we were lucky that he was the one to escape – he was so wrapped up in himself that he was basically whole already. Any old host would do.**

“Wait, so he just bounced around from host to host for like –”

**Six months. Yes.**

Eddie closes the apartment door behind them, setting his gym bag on the floor and kicking off his shoes. It was kind of nice to shower at the gym, especially since the post-exercise high meant that Venom was sort of quiet and Eddie could shower without having to stare resolutely at the wall for fear of…well, now wasn’t the time for that.

“Wait, so you and Riot…you were on the ship, started fighting, and in response he got broke out and crashed a spaceship?”

Venom swirls in barefaced shame between Eddie’s ribs. **He had a flair for the dramatic. We all have different abilities, and he was a team leader, like I said. He…he could be charismatic, if he needed to be. He just preferred to fight his way out of situations that didn’t need an aggressive touch in the first place.**

There’s a softness that overcomes Venom’s voice when he mentions the charisma of Riot, and this, coupled with the first memory Eddie had, of almost two months prior, suddenly clicks together in a horrifying picture. The realization must make it’s way to Venom, because there’s an almost budding frantic nature to Venom’s next attempted words.

**Eddie, listen, it’s –**

“Riot was your ex?!”

**Not really those words but –**

“I helped you fight your ex boyfriend to save the entirety of this planet, and you didn’t tell me until now?” Eddie demands, making his way to the bathroom. He stares at himself in the mirror, staring directly at Venom’s reflection in the mirror. It’s the one way that Venom can’t hide, they’ve discovered – he’s always present, in any reflective surface.

The reflection says nothing, those blank white eyes staring back at him.

“Answer me you fucking idiot.”

His reflection, his Other, stares back up at him and takes a needless breath, massive inky black shoulders shrugging in response. **Yes.**

And then the images come.

 

* * *

 

_The cages aren’t meant to hold them forever, just for the transport. Venom’s already calculated how safe they are until the oxygen is poured in, how, judging from the multitude of apparatus’s needed for these beings to survive in the vacuum of space, that they’re entirely respiratory creatures. Their planet might burn them up, or choke them to death, and it’s imperative that they play along as nicely as possible before they themselves die. Venom passes this information along to Panic, Blight, and Riot, the three fractions of the hive mind left in close proximity. Venom hates not being able to feel the rest of them. Venom hates being cut off._

_Riot can feel this, and grows tired of the attachment. A new plan is suggested, a plan involving reckless abandon and a lack of patience or intelligence. Venom counters, offering more reasons why playing it safe is the better option of the two. Panic and Blight cease giving opinions, watching the firefight between their two superiors._

_Riot calls Venom a sentimental fool and refuses tactically sound information; Venom reminds Riot that the only chance they have is by sticking together. Riot rebukes; Venom terminates whatever was brewing between them, throwing every experience of body mass shared and joined back out into the collective mind, for anyone to see or pick up on._

_Panic and Blight quickly shelter their thoughts, the confirmation laid out before them. Riot says something that makes Venom irreparably angry, but by then the glass is shattered. Riot is free._

 

* * *

 

Eddie blinks his way free of the memory, forcibly clear for the first time. “…You broke up with him and he went on a rampage that killed everyone on board, and got your friends killed?”

 **Not friends,** Venom sullenly responds. **Coworkers, if that. Riot selected a few of us to make the trip – he as leader, myself as intelligence, Blight as brawn, and Panic as some combination of myself and Blight. It was supposed to be recon.**

“And instead, everyone died.” There’s a moment of silence, before Eddie looks up into his reflection, looking Venom in the eyes. “Everyone except you.”

 **He was using me,** Venom continues. **I knew that. I’m not…stupid. He didn’t want to be anything more though, but –**

“But you did.” It’s strange, being in this position, where he feels like he must comfort his Other for an ex that has long since been dealt with. At least when he and Anne had gone through their breakup, it hadn’t been nearly as dramatic. Even though it felt that way at the time, the entire fate of the world wasn’t at stake. And no one died, to top it all off.

Eddie reaches up to the mirror, resting his palm against the cool glass. He feels Venom’s clawed hand against his own, as the reflection mirrors his actions, but only to a point. It’s one of those physics bending abilities Venom seems to possess that Eddie knows he doesn’t want explained to him. None of it would stick, in the slightest, and would probably give him a huge headache instead.

 **I was looking for us in the wrong places.** There’s a hefty dose of discomfort within the both of them, but for different reasons. Venom feels exposed and vulnerable, whereas Eddie…well, Eddie feels bad for Venom. He knows what it’s like to be cast aside for being overly emotional – his first few boyfriends had been that way, and when he’d found Anne, someone who put up with all of his bullshit and still loved him, he thought he was golden. Now, he has Venom, and Venom has him, and is Venom comparing what they have now to what he wanted all along from Riot?

“You were…looking for a host?” Eddie tries, and Venom bares his teeth in a half-hearted show of irritation.

**No, you idiot. I was looking for you. An Other. Someone to bond with.**

“O-oh.”

**Yeah.**

How quintessentially them.

“…Well?”

Venom looks at him in confusion, doing that too-convincing eyebrow raise again. **Well what?**

“Am I doing okay?” Eddie asks, and it sort of betrays just how insecure he is about some aspects of their relationship. He trusts Venom to not lie to him, to keep him safe and to help him when he’s absolutely out of his depth, either in self care or in other facets of life. In return, Venom trusts Eddie with his own safety, with his health and wellbeing, with acquiring food and with supplying a home. They truly are living in a state of symbiosis, and it’s this revelation that Venom gently returns to Eddie over their bond.

**You are mine; you’re perfect.**

Eddie blushes a little, before going up onto his tiptoes and pressing a soft kiss to the mirror, right where Venom’s mouth is. As his eyes drift closed, he feels the mirror shift in a way that the reflection becomes real, where his mouth is no longer pressed against smooth, cold glass but rather razor sharp fangs and inky blackness, an otherworldly hot-cold against his fragile body. His fingers twine into the very form of Venom’s being, pulling them even closer. Somehow, they wind up on Eddie’s bed, and even though they’re not planning on going much farther – more conversations need to be had before that – it feels good to feel wanted.

One of them, somewhere, thinks, **_I never thought I’d have this_** to which the other responds in kind. Then, a beat later; **_I’m so happy it’s with you._**

The next time Eddie tries meditation, a few weeks after this, it’s these kisses that circle back around to their memory. When he finally comes out of it, he finds that they’re both smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> riot wins shit boyfriend of the year award, and i **will** be writing more with them, check me out on my tumblr which is the links all up above 
> 
> like comment and subscribe babes


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